A small adjustment

lying on the bathroom floor

I have a favorite spot in our bathroom. It’s inconspicuous, just a tiny stretch of tile next to the toilet. But if I lie down just right, and let my body melt, an absolutely lovely spot in my back will crack into alignment…every time.

I’m not sure what it is—the hardness of the tile combined with the slope of a settling floor?—but that spot has magic.

And so every time I give my daughter a bath, a 45 minute affair whose ending is resisted at every turn, I usually take a minute to hug my knees into my chest and roll onto my back to hear the satisfying pop of something inside me coming back into alignment. I lay there for a minute feeling the new spaciousness inside me as I gaze up into the dusk settling over the skylight.

It’s not a trip to the chiropractor. It’s not a yoga class. It’s definitely not a 90 minute massage or an entire afternoon to rest. It’s just a small adjustment—but somehow it makes everything else seem more do-able.

Early motherhood is like this.

There isn’t space for the big movements anymore. But there’s always a small sliver of possibility (perhaps nestled right next to the toilet) for the small adjustments you need to come back into alignment with yourself.

There may no longer be a whole day to wander the hillsides of your mind, but there is time for staying up fifteen minutes later to write down a thought you had that day. For creating a picnic on the floor with your toddler so you can eat your entire meal. For taking five deep breaths outside in the seconds between buckling them into their car seat and opening your driver’s side door.

When you become a parent you become an expert at shifting your life in increments, at grasping the realignment that is possible in a mere handspan of minutes, at understanding the value of even the smallest gesture towards wholeness.

I used to think that, if I wanted big growth, beauty and expansion in my life, I needed big actions. To move houses, transform my relationships, overhaul my entire daily routine. But having a child has shown me more than ever the medicine of subtle, almost imperceptible, realignments.

Your life is absolutely detonated when you have a child—and I say this with complete love in my heart.

Everything about the way you used to operate goes to pieces. Like the concept of a shamanic dismemberment—your body, your schedule, the entire way in which you knew yourself, is ripped apart.

Torn—as if in the jaws of a great, terrible, loving animal—so it can be put back together, and you can become even more of who you’re meant to be in this life.

In the face of such a big explosion, there is only one motion that actually works to pull all the pieces back together again.

Detonating ones life doesn’t work to fix what’s been broken.

Instead, as our children grow at breakneck speed, they teach us over and over again the value of the humble, paced, small realignment.

The one that takes only thirty seconds, while you’re lying on your back next to the toilet.

The one that is accessible, always accessible, to us when we need it.

I find that if I take those seconds, if I give myself the grace of the small moment—that deep breath on my back as she plays in the tub—things start coming together.

And maybe this is what the world has been asking of us all along. In the shadow of the bigness, all the unbelievable bigness that we face—small adjustments.

In the light of all the growth we know we’re capable of, personally and as a species, among the reality of what beckoned us here—small adjustments.

The medicine of tiny steps taken towards wholeness.

Of being willing to lay all the way down on your back, breathe deep, and look up through the skylight of life.

To remind ourselves that sometimes all we need are the small adjustments, and we can come back into alignment with life.